Search form

Diehl v. Crook

EFF filed suit on November 1 2007 against the man behind "craigslist-perverts.org" -- a website that publicized responses to fake personal advertisements posted on Craigslist.org -- on behalf of an online journalist who criticized the controversial outing campaign and received legal threats in return.

In a March 2007 settlement Crook agreed to withdraw his DMCA complaints take a copyright law course and apologize for interfering with the free speech rights of his targets.

The agreement settled a lawsuit against Crook filed by EFF on behalf of Jeff Diehl the editor of the Internet magazine 10 Zen Monkeys. Diehl was forced to modify an article posted about Crook's behavior in a fake sex-ad scheme after Crook sent baseless Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices claiming to be the copyright holder of an image used in the story. In fact the image was from a Fox News program and legally used as part of commentary on Crook. But Crook repeated his claims and then attempted to use the same process to get the image removed from other websites reporting on his takedown campaign.

In addition to withdrawing current complaints against Diehl and every other target of his takedown campaign and taking a copyright law course Crook has also agreed to limit any future DMCA notices to works authored or photographed by himself or his wife or where the copyright was specifically assigned to him. All future notices must also include a link to EFF information on his case as well as the settlement agreement. Crook has also recorded a video statement to apologize and publicize the dangers of abusing copyright law.

Related Content

Yesterday, we wrote about the McCain-Palin campaign's letter to YouTube, highlighting how DMCA takedown notices can make online speech disappear from the Internet, even when the claims of infringement plainly lack any merit. Today, we bring you YouTube's response. YouTube's response points out, much like we did yesterday, that...

Yesterday, the McCain-Palin campaign sent a letter to YouTube describing the troubles it has been having with bogus DMCA takedowns targeting its videos: [O]verreaching copyright claims have resulted in the removal of non-infringing campaign videos from YouTube, thus silencing political speech. Numerous times during the...

On blogs, personal and political websites, and through user generated content sites, ordinary citizens in extraordinary numbers are recreating a public sphere and reinvigorating the democratic debate at the core of our political...